Football Clubs (Governance)

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Robertson, for the opportunity to speak in this important, significant and—judging by the number of hon. Members here and the number of people in the Gallery—popular debate. I, too, have had e-mails from members of the Manchester United Supporters Trust. I am sure that nearly everyone has. I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), is present, but I suspect that she might have had the most of all.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on securing the debate. As he said, his constituency is home to two professional clubs, which have had problems at various times over governance, ownership, fan involvement and stadiums. My constituency does not have any professional clubs—Celtic and Hamilton are just outside the boundaries—although it is home to the junior clubs of Rutherglen Glencairn, Cambuslang Rangers and Blantyre Victoria.

I wish to declare an interest, as a Co-operative Member of Parliament: Supporters Direct was born out of the co-operative movement, and the Co-operative party was very involved. As the founding chair of the Fulham Supporters Trust, I would like to speak from the perspective of being involved with, establishing and running a supporters’ trust. I was involved in that long before I had any pretensions to enter elected politics.

The Fulham Supporters Trust was born from a specific and ultimately successful campaign about a football stadium. The people running Fulham football club deigned to believe that the future of the club would be better served by moving away from our traditional community and catchment area to a new ground, for the financial benefits that they prescribed would follow. Such circumstances are typical, and many trusts have come into being in response to a campaign. The issues arise when people running clubs make a mess of things: of the finances, of the issues around the stadium or of how they communicate with and involve supporters.

Such a situation shows where the importance of supporters’ trusts lies and what we need to make clear in discussion. Often, club ownership, which is so disparate in character, is not the issue. However, the people below the level of ownership—those who are in charge of running clubs—often take the attitude that football supporters and fans have no business in being interested in or involved with, or in taking a view on, what is happening in the running of their club. Yet we have seen from examples, to which hon. Members have alluded, that they can in fact do a far better job than some of the paid professionals. Supporters have had to ride to the rescue on far too many occasions.

One of the most important aspects to be dealt with is the involvement of trusts other than at a time of crisis—that is, not just when rescuing a situation because no one else is prepared to take up the challenge. The role of Supporters Direct is therefore crucial. For those of us involved in establishing and running trusts, Supporters Direct has been a superb resource—an efficient and effective organisation run, as far as I can tell, on very little money. It has done a great job of providing guidance and advice to supporters’ trusts. I have asked questions of the Minister and we corresponded on the issue early on in the Parliament. I hope that since our exchange he has had the opportunity to meet Supporters Direct and to understand its work. I hope that he will refer to that in his closing remarks.

As other Members have mentioned—I welcome the words of the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) in particular—the coalition Government have said a lot about mutualism, the big society and such issues. It would be great if we could see a concrete example of that sometimes rather difficult-to-grasp concept in how supporters are involved in their clubs—not just football clubs, but rugby league clubs and other sports that are starting to develop the trust model.

My main point is that supporters are often underestimated and quite often dismissed. Too often, the attitude of clubs is to see supporters as an irritant. If the clubs expended as much energy and time in involving supporters and their organisations as they do, in some cases, denigrating them, that would be a much better use of time and energy. I hope that that message comes out of today’s debate. It is not about what some people have alluded to as imposing a model on all clubs and all situations. It is about involvement and awareness, which can help the way in which clubs are run. That is why I commend the direction in which Arsenal has developed: a progressive trust that might allow early involvement, to prevent some of those problems that would need trusts and fans’ organisations to ride to the rescue. I hope that the Minister can respond to some of the issues that have been raised and give assurances about how Supporters Direct will exist in future.